By Shravanthi Budhi

As a college student, it’s challenging to juggle the daily responsibilities of classes, jobs and extracurricular activities, not to mention the added pressure of answering the question every college student dreads, “What do you want to do for the rest of your life?”

DADDY'S LITTLE GIRL​

Toni Vasquez-Shawan ’10 was in the sixth grade when she started her architecture career as a telephone receptionist at T.I. Vasquez Architects & Planners, Inc. (TVAP), a Manila-based architecture firm founded in 1993 by her father Topy Vasquez. The design bug bit her while accompanying Topy on a site visit. After graduating from the University of Santo Tomas in 2007 with a B.S. in architecture, she acquired a full-time position at TVAP, working under the supervision of a project architect.

On Sept. 26, Career Development Services (CDS) will host the Fall 2018 Career Fair — a gathering that will bring together hundreds of employers in search of talent and thousands of jobseekers looking for internship and co-op opportunities as well as full-time positions. The career fair returns to NJIT’s new Wellness and Events Center, which provides all attendees a modern, state-of-the art recruitment space in which to meet people and make contacts.

KARINA DSOUZA ’20

MAJOR: Biomedical Engineering

HOMETOWN: New Milford, N.J.

MARY McGUINNESS ’20

MAJOR: Chemistry

HOMETOWN: Spring Lake, N.J.

Chemical engineering major Jennifer Callaghan is spending her summer on the NJIT campus working to help define the next generation of ballistic materials. Laura Gould, an architecture student, is also at the university during the summer break, using Google Street View to study the correlation between urban infrastructure and the use and creation of sacred space in Italy.

They met in second grade and, with similar family origins and a mutual interest in science, have been friends ever since. Aseel Shehadeh and Tahanee Mustafa, who both have parents raised in Palestine and who partnered in six consecutive New Jersey Science Olympiads hosted at NJIT, have something else in common: They took part in Options for Advanced Academic Achievement, a program of the university’s Center for Pre-College Programs (CPCP).

This spring, NJIT’s 2018 College of Science and Liberal Arts Awards honored an exclusive group of its undergraduate and graduate seniors with the CSLA Outstanding Student Award — a distinction annually given to students who have demonstrated the highest level of excellence in their field.

For some, the work of a professional “death investigator” might sound like something straight out of “Law & Order” and “CSI.” 

However, for Carly Berdan ’18, that job will soon be a very real career.

Harpuneet Kaur is all smiles on a Friday afternoon as she seats herself at a table in the main communal area of The Henry J. and Erna D. Leir Research Institute for Business, Technology, and Society, on the NJIT campus. The Martin Tuchman School of Management (MTSM) finance major is happy to have her exams behind her and the MTSM awards ceremony and NJIT commencement just ahead. Her parents have arrived from India to attend the festivities and with a full-time position awaiting her at IEX, the Investors Exchange, life is good.